Rainstorms from typhoon Kaemi kill 25 in south China

BEIJING, July 27 (Reuters) Floods, landslides and other disasters triggered by Typhoon Kaemi have killed at least 25 people and left more than 50 missing in southern China, state media said today.

Kaemi weakened into a tropical depression after sweeping across China's southeastern coast on Tuesday, but downpours it brought soaked at least four provinces, all still reeling from damage by tropical storm Bilis, which killed more than 600.

Six people were killed when flash floods along a mountainside hit a military barracks in the eastern province of Jiangxi, Xinhua news agency said.

President Hu Jintao has ordered that ''the utmost effort'' be made to search for 38 officers, soldiers and family members who are still missing, it added.

Two girls aged nine and six died in southern Guangdong province after their house collapsed under a landslide.

Both incidents occurred early yesterday when the victims were probably sleeping, Xinhua said.

Seventeen people were killed, mostly by flood waters, in Jiangxi's mountainous south. Another 15 were missing and roads, power and communications have been disrupted in some areas.

''The deaths were mainly reported in Shangyou county, which has also suffered many house collapses. Rivers and dams there are overflowing at alarming levels,'' an official at the provincial flood control office told Reuters by telephone.

Relief workers have been distributing blankets, clothing and food to the 12,000 villagers evacuated in the county.

In neighbouring Hunan province, hundreds of thousands were relocated as streets in the city of Chenzhou, where Bilis killed nearly 200 earlier this month, were flooded and at least three were missing, Xinhua said.

A section of the Beijing-Zhuhai highway in southern Hunan, cut for days by Bilis, was again submerged by water.

In Fujian province, where Kaemi made landfall and forced the evacuation of over half a million, troops repaired a stretch of a a levee that collapsed on Wednesday, threatening the lives of more than 20,000 villagers, a local official and a resident said.

''But many people here still have to live in village schools because more than 10,000 houses were destroyed when Bilis came,'' said the official, surnamed Wu, in Fujian's Zhaoan county.

Rain was likely to continue tomorrow, China's Central Meteorological Office said on its Web site (www.nmc.gov.cn).

Tropical storms and typhoons frequently strike Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and southern China during a season that lasts from early summer to late autumn.

But China's storms have been particularly deadly this year, claiming more than 1,000 lives, Xinhua said.

By yesterday, the rains had destroyed half a million houses, damaged 3.3 million hectares of crops and caused economic losses totalling 74 billion yuan (9.28 billion dollars), it said.

REUTERS PKS KN1735